A King`s Trade

'Great-guns manned, loaded, and ready, sir!' Lt. Catterall said from the foot of the quarterdeck ladder. 'The ship is in all respects prepared for action.'

The gun-deck forward and below Lewrie's post amidships by those freshly hammock-stiffened quarterdeck nettings was dimly lit for night action. A well-spaced row of battle lanthorns marched down each beam, thickly- glassed and made of heavy metal, so gun crews could have just enough illumination to see to their duties, robust enough to resist a spill of the candle flames inside them, and create a fatal fire or an explosion of a serge powder cartridge after it had been removed from its wood or leather carrying sleeve. Beside them, tiny red 'fireflies' glowed between the glossy, black-painted artillery; smouldering ends of slow-match coils wrapped round the tops of the swab-water tubs by each piece, the last-resort means of igniting the priming quills full of the finest mealed gunpowder, should the flint in more modern flintlock strikers break or fail. Far up forward, there were another pair of small lights by the forecastle belfry, normally used by the sleepy ship's boys, whose duty it was to keep track of the half-hour and hour glasses, turn them, and ring the bells of the watch.

'Charge both batteries, Mister Catterall,' Lewrie ordered. 'We don't wish to be taken by surprise. Open the ports and run the guns into battery, both sides… just in case.'

'Aye aye, sir!'

A quick look astern satisfied him that the convoy was turning alee, all of them, earlier than scheduled. A quarter-hour longer, and they would have been alerted by Grafton to 'Ready About,' and, at the proper night signal-a fusee at the end of each foremast royal yard-would have hauled their wind and worn off the wind, as much as one might be expected from civilian shipmasters. Now, they were wearing individually, the most threatened bearing down on the larboard ships, startling them to haul off and fall alee like stampeding sheep, order lost, and if this turned out to be nothing, they'd be half the following day rounding them back up!

'Both the near-hand merchantmen seem to be bearing astern of us, sir,' Lt. Langlie announced, with the faintest bit of relief apparent in his voice. 'Should we be going about as well, Captain?'

'I've a mind to let 'em fall far enough astern, then tack, and see what aid we may give Stag and Horatius,' Lewrie decided, looking forward and to starboard, again, noting where Capt. Graves's lumbering two-decker had gotten to in the meantime. 'A moment, Mister Langlie.'

The threat seemed to be from seaward, but… on such an ebony night, nothing could be taken for granted. The French squadrons that haunted the Cape passage and the Indian Ocean were rumoured to be at least two large 36-gun or 38-gun frigates, operating separately, but paired with one, possibly two, corvettes apiece, three-masted, full-rigged, equivalent to Sloops of War in the Royal Navy, armed with a battery ranging from 14 to 20 guns, and sometimes sailing in concert with well-armed, over-manned privateers, as well. Such a pack could prowl like wolves-sea wolves!

And, like wolves, Lewrie realised with his 'wary bone' wakening, could attack from all quarters, not just the one, dashing in to nip or intimidate, 'til their quarry was encircled and doomed.

'Mister Winwood?' Lewrie called over his shoulder.

'Aye, sir. Here,' the Sailing Master reported, coming to join him from his usual post before the binnacle cabinet and double helm.

'We've a goodly way on? Sufficient for a quick, clean wear?'

'So I would adjudge it, sir, aye,' Winwood ponderously answered.

'And, no reefs, rocks, or shoals to loo'rd?'

'Not for at least sixteen or seventeen miles, no, sir,' Winwood was forced to avow, after a wince and a tooth- sucking noise, obviously much more comfortable with such a statement after a long perusal over his charts, a set of fresh star sights, taking the height of the moon by back-staff, and auguring the entrails of the odd passing gull.

'Very well, sir, we'll come about,' Lewrie announced. 'Mister Catterall? Check tackle, and be ready for a wear. Mister Langlie, I wish hands to stations, ready to come about to larboard, then steer a course Nor'easterly.' 'Aye aye, sir! Bosun! Pipe 'Stations For Wearing Ship'!' Lewrie paced to the leeward bulwarks to study the ocean where they meant to go as the fresh bustle broke out round his ears. With the heavy night-glass to his eye once more, he saw grey-black sea and a few white-flecked rollers, that now and again caught the faint glim of the waning moon, a complete pall of utter blackness that showed the veriest upper tier of far-off African cliffs, thin on the horizon. A complete sweep from Due South to Due North showed nothing else.

'Up mains'l and spanker, clear away the after bowlines! Brace in the after-yards! Up helm!' Langlie was bawling through his speaking-trumpet, and Proteus began to swing, to heel over as she slowed, bowsprit and jib-boom sweeping alee across the black face of the night.

The winds dead aft, now. 'Clear away head bowlines, lay the headyards square! Shift over the head sheets!' Lewrie walked over to the starboard side with his telescope, looking into the stern quarter, and abeam as Proteus continued to swing, the wind now striking her on her larboard quarters. 'Man the main tack and sheet! Clear away rigging! Spanker outhaul! Clear away the brails!'

There seemed to be nothing dangerous to landward. Lewrie eased his straining eye by lowering the night-glass for a second, as sudden gunfire rolled down on them from windward!

He spun about to catch the ruddy after-flash from gun muzzles, the briefly-lit spurts of whitish-grey smoke from some ship's pieces, and the pyrotechnic, spiralling yellowish embers from cartridge cloth. Distant as that gunfire was, his ears could discern the deep boomings of 24-pounders of Horatius's lower-deck artillery, the crisper barks of what he took to be HMS Stag's 12-pounders, and some light, terrier-like 'yaps' from even lighter guns!

'Missing all the fun!' he heard Midshipman Grace whisper in the relative silence, once those distant guns fell silent.

'Brace up headyards, overhaul weather lifts… haul aboard!' Lt. Langlie bellowed, as the ship came rapidly back to early abeam of the winds.

'Mister Catterall,' Lewrie called down in the tumult. 'Man the starboard battery. Excess hands to chock trucks and snug the run-out tackles, then re-join their mates!'

'Aye aye, sir!'

'Steady out bowlines, haul taut the weather trusses, braces, and lifts!' Lt. Langlie concluded, at last. 'Clear away on deck, there!'

They were about, bearing off the night wind to the Nor'east, and, by the sound of the hull, making a goodly way, again, well clear of the ships of their convoy, now fleeing North in no particular order, with, as Lewrie could espy, the sluggard Festival and HMS Grafton now ahead of them all.

'Thankee, Mister Langlie, well done,' Lewrie took time to say as he took one last, long sweep of the sea to the East and Sou'east, but was drawn back to larboard by a new storm of gunfire, sounding as if Horatius had spotted something and had loosed an entire two-deck broadside at it.

'Deck, there!' a lookout atop the mizen shouted down. 'Black ship astern the starboard quarter, close in!'

'Up helm, Mister Langlie! Stand by, the starboard battery, and be ready to engage, short range!' Lewrie cried, whirling about, again. 'Get her bows down and-!'

But, it was too late. Somehow, a ship had sneaked up on them, all her lights extinguished, perhaps with her sails sooted, or so old that dark tan, weathered canvas would not reflect enought light to see her by! Even as the wheel was put hard-over, more gunfire split the night! Until the very moment that her guns lit off, no one on deck could have spotted her, not the night lookouts normally posted at the bulwarks, not the watch officers, not even Lewrie, for all his urgent peering! He froze, caught, like his frigate, with his breeches down, and there was nothing else to do but stand and take it!

BAM-BAM-BAM! Eight guns hammered out a slow, metronomic broadside as the hostile ship crossed Proteus's stern, serving her a vicious rake, by the size of the muzzle blasts at a range of about two cables! Round-shot screamed or moaned, the howling rising in tone as they lashed towards them. Then came the crashing noises, the sound of timbers being smashed with the parrot 'Rawrk!' of rivened wood, the shattering of glass sash-windows a few feet below the taffrails as the round-shot pierced through Lewrie's great- cabins to bowl, richochet, and carom past where the temporary partitions that normally shielded his privacy had stood, down the gun-deck among sailors standing by their pieces, shattering truck-carriages, glancing off pristine